Pete Crowther Poems

And now at last
the rain has passed.
See the flowers
freshened by showers
...

If I were given the choice, I would
get rid of ‘ought’ and ‘must’ and ‘should’.
Such words would go in the rubbish bin
along with ‘guilt’ and ‘blame’ and ‘sin’.
...

When I was a student,
In Lucretius I read
Of the pleasure that people found
In watching from shore
...

We never should have let her in,
Grendel’s mum, you said that we’d be sorry
If we did, but I was feeling generous
After several double gins
...

Tonight the tide is running high
And from my garden in the dark
I hear the hidden curlews call
And just beyond, two fields away,
...

When I heard him
struggle
to speak French,
I thought: “My French,
...

If I had the room
And the money to spend,
I'd buy a white camel
And call it 'My friend'
...

(Written after seeing a coloured photograph of the ‘Galactic Bulge’ area of the Milky Way taken from the Hubble space telescope)

Great God it takes one’s very breath away
To see the Hubble picture of the Milky Way,
...

There is no breath of wind today
The fields still white with frost
So clear the air that I can see
For miles and miles to where
...

On the supermarket’s shiny shelves
The apples are laid in rows
To catch the wandering eye of those
Poor hapless shoppers like ourselves.
...